Naraka
by tami3
Summary: The story Kanda has to tell about Alma--what it means to live after him. Told through the many levels of Bhuddist hell.


Naraka

1. Arbuda: "Blister" A dark, frozen plain surrounded by icy mountains and continually swept by blizzards. Inhabitants of this world arise fully grown and abide life naked and alone, while the cold raises blisters upon their bodies. The length of life in this Naraka is said to be the time it would take to empty a barrel of sesame seed if one only took out a single seed every hundred years.

Kanda has eaten the bitterness of a person who is owned. He was once not a someone but a something they picked up and put away and took out and put away again. Being their possession had been a thoughtless occupation. Like a hollow ceramic form, there had only been emptiness inside the white crust of his skull.

They tried giving him personality when the whim of sentimental value struck. _Good-looking-soldier-boy-first-of-his-kind-miracle-ace-in-the-hole-hoo-boy-we've-got-that-fat-bastard-on-the-run-now-ain't-that-right-son?_

Crimped mouths of the aging female researchers (partially) responsible for his conception kissed him. They had dusty lips like flour dumpling skins, or lipstick-greasy lips like the meat fillings. Strategists carefully placed him in countries like a token on a game board, then snatched him up and stuck him elsewhere. _There. Nope! Over there. Say, you sure are a good sport, little buddy. Gimme a salute!. _

And then, finally: bored. _Put him away now. _To where? Asia. England. Someplace less important that the hive of innovation of the States, where invention sprang from the cutting edge of permissible secularism (the Vatican's more classic version of God had no popular following there, anyways). Kanda as a product had been mined. Bring on the next miracle. _Move that thing out of the parlor display case and into the attic. _

It was the guilt, they implored him later, trying to make him understand. The guilt! They couldn't take looking at him anymore. But it wasn't. After they saw what he could do to a half-mad half-akuma, they'd held onto him fast. His success and tragedy were great news. But this, that, other little blessings and holy mysteries coming in, and then off with him to England, him with his irritating accusatory stares and anticlimactic similarity to regular exorcists.

He'd had no say. Things didn't, [once] sentimentalized over or not.

---

2. Nirarbuda – "Burst Blister". Colder than before, the blisters burst open, leaving the beings' bodies covered with frozen blood and pus.

He was not ready to admit to the existence Alma. He never was.

But it could be said that it was not true that Kanda has never felt anything for anyone. It had not been very sweet, or deep. It hadn't been love. It had barely been an attraction. It had been, he understood, a hole that he had clumsily filled with the best-fitting piece he could find. She had walked in through the door and had been quiet and scared and from that he quietly cobbled an attachment.

She was softer than he was, and badly broken. He had never needed to learn how to bear with this because that was how he had been to begin with, coming out of the surgery room or delivered from the surrogate or taken out of the incubator (no one had ever told how, and he had been too young to remember for himself). Upset, they called her, but he didn't recall her having enough of a personality to have been upset. She had been depressed. She had been without personality, which had increased her appeal because the same thing was true of him.

But maybe someone had seen his eyes linger too long on her, and they had not liked it. They were always in a separate cohort, in separate barracks, and on separate missions, although the rest of them were shuffled as easily as a deck of cards._ Girls and boys shouldn't sleep in the same quarters. Two young people can't be trusted to get things done when they're on the same team. A little girl won't respond well to Tiedoll. _And finally, the undressed truth when he would not give up on her.

There were saints, and there were heretics. They were not the same. She was in a "state," they said. Her faith was being tested, her soul was in temporary retreat as she adjusted to the overwhelming grace of the direct summons of God. She was a crusader with manifest destiny. They didn't want him confusing her about the purity of her calling. Shocking thing, that effective fakes could be made and they still needed to rob happy homes!

But no, no need for a grudge, that was absolutely not how things stood. Kanda was no chosen one, he was a marionette they'd stitched together, and shoddily at that. He was all surface paint, polish, and glitter. No quality within, not a drop in his joints. He'd perform well enough and garner some oo's and ah's on the stage, but God's special protection was not holding him together and he'd fall apart for it much earlier than she would.

And that was the difference. She needed to trust in God's wisdom, because there were miracles, she was qualified to receive them, and He would not desert her in her darkest hour. (He didn't. Komui came.)

And no fuss needed to be wasted on this matter because if people had their God, then whatever else had whatever was meant for them. Kanda needed no pity because it was not like anyone else had counteragents for the akuma virus derived from its very source. No envy towards him was necessary, either. He was simple thing of science. Was a golem pitied because it couldn't pray to God and be heard? Envied because it could feel no pain? No.

Kanda could expect no extra help in his darkest hour. This was quite clear to him. It was acceptable.

---

3. Aṭaṭa – "Shivering". Beings shiver in the cold, making an aṭ-aṭ-aṭ sound with their mouths.

"You are a damned fool."

Kanda remembered his master cursing at him for the only time ever. They were eating on the road, Daisya flanking Kanda and Marie flanking Tiedoll in the booth. Kanda was boxed in the corner. The two other young men sat, not frozen, not eating because they couldn't order due to the tension, and not inclined to say anything. They drummed fingers on the table, sipped water, and crossed arms. _Once, they had stolen his food and thrown his books into the pond and put spiders in his clothes. When they were children, Daisya and Marie had been interested in his small scrappiness and how he couldn't really fight back even though everyone was all a-dither about how great of an exorcist he was. (They'd shown him.) Now they were just bored with him. _

Kanda ignored them well, glaring instead at the elderly exorcist--but out of the corner of his eye the frizzy rise of hair was distracting him. The crimped mane of his mentor swelled his head to stuffed bear proportions. Kanda was ever reluctant to respect him because of this sight. Whenever he spoke to Froi Tiedoll, he had this ridiculousness to contend with.

"Who made you throw away your worth before even trying to look for it, Yuu?" Tiedoll demanded, bristled mouth stern. "No one but yourself. Ask yourself just who tells you that your life can just be thrown away, before saying that we have all given up on you."

"Come along, boys." he summoned his two obediently life-appreciating apprenti. "We've been working hard enough to deserve a more luxurious a meal, wouldn't you say?" They got up to march out. Tiedoll paused only to utter a short "Join us when you're ready, Yuu." to his stiff-backed foster child who knew in completely certainty that he was not Froi Tiedoll's foster child. Not because he didn't believe in the notion of it because he knew it was true for Daisya and Marie, but because Tiedoll's kindness had never made any difference for him and what was a point of a parent that didn't matter?

As for joining them, Kanda did not and he spent the night with his back pressed against tree trunks, squinting in the dark for akuma necks to chop. He was murderous but it was not like he wished the dithering old man harm. Kanda could endure any sharp jibes about his sourness, but talking to him like a brat after all he'd been through was something else entirely. He killed the entire batch they were supposed to share, and then fell asleep to the cold pink daybreak so that they had to come looking for him.

---

4. Hahava – "Lamentation" Beings lament in the cold, going ha, ho in pain.

Kanda had become lazy and content in his hatred by the time a young man by the name of Lavi appeared.

According to most, hatred was complex, multifaceted thing boiling with justifications, regrets, vague shame, wasted time, vengeance, and an impetus to live an unlovely life (just to spite someone else). It was not. Not for Kanda. His hatred for was tidy and compact without the slightest leeway for nuance. What they had done to him was evil. So simple was this that even they knew it and left it alone because there was nothing anyone could do that could change this.

Hatred became a spot bright enough to blind when he met Lavi. It hurt and made him feel so lonely that it became a denseness in his center. He crouched in his room to better clutch at this density--this heavy, small, fullness, inside him. He'd cried and wasn't able to stop. He had never done this before, so even as he did his mind drifted to the side, impatient with the surreality of it.

Lavi had walked up him--same age, same size, quite a bit less good-looking but with a much nicer face--and said, "Your name is Yuu, right?". Mistaking Kanda's violently reactive expression as interest, he went on "Some people call me Bookman Junior, but that's a little weird…just call me Lavi."

Which was not "They say you're called Yuu….Me? It's kind of embarrassing…but they call me Alma." But it was close enough.

The dredging of bad memories and how _yes-hearing-his-first-name-still-made-him-want-to-cry_ came and went because after all, Lavi was an exorcist and was only around sometimes. Same for Kanda. But he was salt in a wound that had come out of a single intense moment in the past--a moment stuck in both resentment and love. It was easily forgotten when Lavi just happened to not be a problem, but he was always there, waiting, biding his time to come back, act kind-of like Alma, and drive Kanda mad again.

After six months of this, Kanda started equating Lavi to psychological herpes.

---

5. Huhuva – the Naraka of chattering teeth. Here the beings shiver as their teeth chatter, making the sound hu, hu.

Daisya died. Kanda tried not to care and couldn't.

---

6. Uptala-the "blue lotus" Naraka. Here the intense cold makes the skin turn blue like the color of an utpala waterlily.

They thought they were so clever when they when they said _"Kanda oh Kanda Mugen must be your best friend."_

They didn't believe that he really knew what a best friend was supposed to be.

---

7. Padma the "lotus" Naraka. In this Naraka the blizzard cracks open the frozen skin leaving one raw and bloody.

He didn't like Allen.

Lenalee soaked up their sin and she was nervous around him sometimes as if it were her also her fault that he was troubled. She probably wouldn't be like that that if Kanda didn't give her looks as if it were, but it was hard to turn off a default face. The entire world (his entire world) always had been to blame. Too much work to make an exception, even if she was nice. Besides, even if she knew, she would just try empathy.

The Order did bad things. She knew that from personal experience. Kanda could see her brain working at relatibility behind her "let me love you, we're just the same" face. But they had never made her hurt someone else; certainly not someone she cared about. What would she do if the Order told her to take out Komui? Say hell no, Kanda supposed, and then kick the face off the person who suggested it.

_ Alma had screamed like a hellion. _"_Please stop screaming." Kanda had begged him as his arms got tired from holding up Alma's weight with only the thin blade of his sword to help. "Please, please stop screaming!" But when Alma really did stop screaming, it was worse than when he had been and Kanda was so, so sorry that he had asked._

…Anyways. That was the strength difference between a 9 year child and a 16 year old woman. Good for her.

No one else was very helpful, either. Lavi seeker of knowledge would find the feat of his creation mighty impressive. Mighty impressive indeed, he would think. He would frown and ask if Kanda needed to talk about it more. That was the problem with Lavi--he had his human moments, but you could never tell if he was working his voodoo mind tricks to loosen the tongue and satisfy his own curiosity. He was a lot like the village gossip, except that he only talked to himself.

Tiedoll set out to heal(which was insulting). Komui worked on reparations for crimes against all exorcists and Kanda was one of the cases in his filing cabinet that he hadn't gotten around to yet. (Social workers were overworked.) No one had a clean slate with Kanda.

No one, except for Allen. Allen hadn't wanted to hurt Mana either. And Kanda hated to admit it, but Allen might have one-upped him because Allen had made the choice himself.

But he didn't like Allen. And that was a great pity, because Allen was the only who'd had a shot at all.

8. Mahāpadmathe--"great lotus" Naraka. Here the whole body cracks into pieces and the internal organs are exposed to the cold and they also crack.

One day, something popped in his eardrum and forced him to lie down. While he rested, he dreamed about Alma.

Alma had been a funny looking kid. What kind of hormones had to be in his system to for him to grow sideburns and eyebrows like that? Matted and a bad color, they almost ran together. And he couldn't blame the akuma nuclei speeding things up--akuma were smooth like the best factory plastic toys. He'd also had a pointy upturned nose that was at once like a piglet's and a mouse's. He'd been on the pudgy side too, which wasn't terrible for a child, but with the shape of his face he hadn't made for the charming kind of chubby. All this, but Alma hadn't really been _ugly_. He was one of those kids that made you go "Ah, I can't wait until he grows up and it all comes together for him".

Alma, Kanda thought. He pressed his fingers as close as they could to get to Alma. His face had gotten thinner. This was made only more apparent by the fishy gill-like ridges scalloping the edges of his cheeks and pulling them in. The patches of this slitted skin hugged a cheekbone--who knew Alma even had cheekbones under that babfat? His hair fell in sweeps instead of clotting together like dust as it had before. It coiled restlessly back and forth in the plasma below where he floated. In between the hotly colored wires and metal pads laid into his bones, Alma was as muscled as any tough young person their age should be. He didn't look remotely weird anymore.

Alma, it really did come together for you, Kanda thought, amazed.. He smiled a little. Well, good for you, he thought.

Good for you.

Author's note:

Wanted to finish it. Wanted to have something about Kanda since this is his moment in spotlight. Bhuddist hells wikied.

Thank you to sakonma, who drew a BEAUTIFUL wintery piece inspired by this fic! Go look at it and leave a comment, she's incredibly talented! (For some reason won't let me copy paste the link...so look up "sakonma" on any server, and her deviantart should pop up. The piece is called O-k-i-y-o-k-e)

Edit: Ahhhh holy hell this was probably my most error-ridden post yet, both formatting and universe accuracy. Thank you for the catch on Tiedoll's name, pika318!


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